August 15, 2005

I finally got around to watching the Pamela Anderson Roast I'd taken the trouble to TiVo. As you may remember, I wanted to watch it because of the fuss that was made over Courtney Love's behavior. Well, the show was excruciating, with second rate comics making one bad anatomical joke after another. It was supposedly a charity event for PETA – man, I remember when a politically correct operation like that would not sully itself with rank sexist material – and many, many of the jokes connected the kind of animals PETA cares about with the animal names that are used as slang for a woman's genitalia. So the show was utter crapola but somehow everyone wrote about Courtney, because apparently it's so fun to attack her. Interestingly enough, it turned out that Courtney had the best control over how to do a celebrity roast right. Everyone was holding a drink and badly faking high spirits, but she outdid them all, convincingly displaying a roasty attitude. When it was her turn to speak, she did her part perfectly. She played the rocker who deigned to stop by to give Pamela real rock cred because she loved her. She did her lines and her moves and then she kissed Anderson's high-heeled foot. Well played, Courtney! Chez Althouse, we love you!

UPDATE: Putting Pam and Courtney side-by-side made me want to spin out an analysis similar to the comparison between Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor in "Jackie Under My Skin" (by Wayne Koestenbaum). You have two icons and one is pure and idealized, the other is tainted and dirtied. In the Pam/Courtney comparison, both represent sexuality and self-indulgence, but Pam has some how made what was dirty into something utterly polished and glossy – essentially fulfilling the Playboy dream. Courtney is the real-life version of sexual indulgence: this is what trying to live that fantasy will really make you look like. Well, now I'm thinking of another book.

19 comments:

Not only was it utter crapola, but it did adequately highlight Ms. Anderson's career. Courtney is in desperate need of some help. Either her brain is permanently fried (which is highly possible) or she was "three sheets to the wind" or she was on crank.

Her comments were the best -- and highlight why the Friar Roasts are good as opposed to these Comedy Central "slap-dash" affairs. The Friar's roasts are funny because the roasters know (and at least he/she has a long show biz career) and actually have professional respect for the roastee. I'm sure there are exceptions, but a roast of Buddy Hackett, Jerry Stiller, Alan King (or even those old Dean Martin jobs)is highly superior and just as profane and vulgar -- with love.

And the Milton Berle "big penis" jokes were much more clever than the Tommy Lee versions.

The roast was insanely raunchy. I'm surprised that it was permitted to be aired. The biggest problem was that every roaster used the exact same jokes. I'm a big Hole fan, and wish Courtney well, though I found her behavior very pathetic, especially when she continually slurred her words, claiming, "I'm sober for one year."

Courtney needs to do what Kurt should have done. Get out of Hollywood, and live a healthy life in Montana.

I heard they're rebroadcasting it without the bleeps this week some time. I actually thought some parts were pretty funny. Jeffrey Ross and Sara Silverman are always good for a laugh. But the old friar's club roasts are way better. I think it loses a lot when the roasters don't actually know the person they are roasting. They seem limited to the obvious.

I thought that having Courtney on stage was a smart move by Pam since she's an even easier target for the roasters.

here in portland we knew courtney love very well long before she latched on to kurt cobain. the top local band everyone thought was going to make it was theatre of sheep, and courtney attached herself (still fat, dark hair, pre-nosejob etc) to the goodlooking singer, wearing down his resistance to some extent by sheer doggie-like persistence. she had the reputation of being insane -- not in a good way, like being "creative" or anything, just spoiled and impossible, someone it was a bad idea to let come nto your apartment.

i'm no fan of melissa rossi's political writing (she now lives in barcelona and has made a career out of shallow far leftist cant) but her quickie "unauthorized biography" of courtney actually has a lot of undigested, scarcely edited raw material from the days before kurt's fortune.

I'm glad Miklos posted with some 'local' first hand accounts of Courtney pre-Fame. I've always heard those stories second hand.

From what I can piece together she is the worst kind of narcisstic star-$#$@#er with a major spoiled rotten streak. Pure disaster. Spreads her evil everywhere she goes leaving endless trails of enemies and embittered former-friends.

Courtney Love has some balls claiming what she did the night of that roast. A year clean and sober, Courtney? Yeah, right, and I have Donald Trump's money and Ron Jeremy's wang. She makes Keith Richards look like one of the Osmonds! What a pathetic waste of humanity. Courtney, not only are your 15 minutes up, you never deserved/earned them to begin with. Now go away, you nasty troll.

What people truly fail to understand is that if courtney WANTED to take hollywood by storm she easially could. During her years of being in Larry Flynt to Man on the moon she was evrywhere and on evrything. Then one of her best friends Kevin AuSaun ( something like that) Diesd and she slipped a bit and the did Trapped and then fell down. She will probobly do a few more movies and find herself again. Remeber a famouse quote that hundreds of celebritys have said, bad publicity is good publicity, and if thats truly true then shes getting more publicity than Brad and Angelina Jolie ( whom if i hear anything more about ill fricken puke).

"man, I remember when a politically correct operation like that would not sully itself with rank sexist material – and many, many of the jokes connected the kind of animals PETA cares about with the animal names that are used as slang for a woman's genitalia."

I know what you mean. It's like Peta doesn't have any dignity any more. Besides, the fact that real beavers and women's beavers are both delicious is purely coincidental. Just because cats like milk, and they are sometimes called pussycats, doesn't mean you have to make a joke about getting milk all over that pussy... It's just childish is what it is!

It reminds me of a joke I once heard about sex with younger people. It went:Q-"What's so great about sex with twentyfour year olds?"A-"There's twenty of them!"I mean, pedophilia is not funny anymore, not even when it's a member of the clergy.